


All The Best Stories

by hyenateeth



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: A character loses a limb off screen, Alternate Universe - Hospital, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, First Meetings, I don't know how to tag it other than that, M/M, Major Character Injury, Non-Graphic Violence, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-15
Updated: 2013-04-15
Packaged: 2017-12-08 13:14:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/761714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyenateeth/pseuds/hyenateeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"See, that's a much better story."</p>
<p>It really was. Though Bahorel expected he’d listen to Jehan tell any story, because Jehan had a melodic voice and funny little speech patterns and a pretty smile, even when he was half asleep in a hospital bed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All The Best Stories

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first attempt at writing these two and I'm not sure what it is? 
> 
> Warnings are in the tags. There could be more to this. I haven't decided.

The hospital was not unfamiliar to Bahorel, though he had never had to stay quite so long before. He would end up in a hospital bed occasionally with a mild concussion, or a few broken ribs, but being stabbed was a new experience for him. Sure, it had been awful and painful for a while, but now, a week in, he was mostly drugged out of his mind and it was really more annoying than anything. 

Bahorel was getting antsy being hooked up to an IV and trapped in a bed. Bahorel being antsy wasn’t a good thing. 

Him being antsy was what got him stabbed in the first place. Well, it had got him in a seedy bar, and got him to a pick a fight with some lowlife motherfucker. The lowlife motherfucker’s knife is what got him stabbed, technically. 

But the point was, hospitals were _boring_ , being drugged was boring, even flirting with nurses was beginning to bore him. The food was bad and the air smelled funny and over all he was just ready to be done with the whole experience, but _apparently_ he hadn’t healed yet.

“You can’t go walking around!” Nurse Fauchelevent scolded him. “It’s only been a week! You might pop a stitch! Where will you be then, bleeding everywhere!”

“Bleeding in a hospital,” he had countered. “I think my chances of survival would be pretty good.” 

“Nope, I would just let you bleed. It would serve you right.” She had attempted a serious tone, but had been biting back a smile. Bahorel liked Nurse Fauchelevent, even if she scolded him about stitches.

Bahorel could care less about stitches. He was bored. Not to mention he couldn’t really sleep, sometimes. You would think the drugs would help him, but they were reducing his dosage or something. He didn’t always pay the most attention when Dr. Combeferre talked.

Which is why he found himself waking up at odd hours of the night.

Which was also why he found himself wandering the hospital at odd hours of the night. 

Not that the night time was much more interesting, at least not the places he figured he could go without being caught by a nurse on duty. It was better than being trapped in a bed though, even if walking was not easy with a wound in his stomach and an IV in his hand, that he was forced to wheel along next to him. He got pretty far though before he had to stop and clutch the pole of the IV until the pain died down. He was in a wing he didn’t really recognize, but it seemed to be a wing of private rooms, with names written on little cards next to the doors. Long term guests. 

So he was standing there, steadying himself again, trying to be quiet to avoid detection, when he heard a voice. 

“Hey,” it called to him.

Bahorel looked around. 

“Hey,” it called again, in a stage whisper. “Come here would you?” 

It was coming from the room he had stopped at. The door was open. Bahorel glanced at the name on the card (“ _Prouvaire_ ”) before glancing in the room. 

“Come here!” called the voice again, and now Bahorel could see a figure laying on the bed inside, head craned up slightly to look at him. 

Bahorel went into the room. 

It was bursting with flowers, various arrangements and colors, all with little cards next to them, and in the center of the madness of color was a plain white bed and a young man laying in it, craning his head up to look at Bahorel. He was thin and had long reddish blond hair, that seemed caught under his shoulders and was probably pulling from the way he was lifting his head. 

“Hey,” said the man again, grinning in a way that made the amount of painkilling drugs he was on obvious. “You’re out of bed.”

“That I am,” chuckled Bahorel, holding his the pole of his IV like it was a spear to pose with triumphantly. “The hospital beds cannot hold my spirit.”

‘Aaah an adventurer. How exciting. Can you help me sit up good adventuring sir?” The man ( _Prouvaire_ ) lifted an arm as an invitation for help. 

When Bahorel leaned in he could see why the help was needed. Prouvaire’s far arm to Bahorel was decidedly missing below the elbow, Recently too, as the bandaging would imply, though the cuts that were now visible to Bahorel in the low light, on Prouvaire’s freckled face, seemed to be all but healed. 

It seemed that it would be rude to express excessive surprise, and it wasn’t as if someone would be in a hospital for no reason, so Bahorel didn’t comment. Instead he carefully wrapped an arm around Prouvaire’s back and hoisted him into a sitting position, pulling his pillow up with him to lean on. He felt a small swell of pride that his strength had not diminished that much in the wake of his hospital stay.

Prouvaire sighed as if in relief. “Ah, thank you kind sir. You are a noble adventurer indeed.” 

Bahorel’s lips quirked up. _Is he very drugged, or just odd?_

He didn’t contemplate it long, because the next instant Prouvaire was smiling up at him, a small, gentle smile. “Would you like to take a rest from your journeys?” Bahorel looked beside him. There was a chair. With great relief, he sat, instinctively letting a hand go to his abdomen. His stitches were fine. 

“So Adventurer,” said Prouvaire as Bahorel sat. “Do you have a name? Odysseus perhaps?”

Bahorel laughed, probably a bit too loud. “A name, but not quite that. My friends call me Bahorel.”

“Bahorel. That is nice. Does this mean we’re friends? Because my friends call me Jehan. You can call me that too. If we’re friends.”

Bahorel grinned. “We can be friends. As long as you don’t tell the nurses I’m out of bed unsupervised.”

Jehan giggled, honest to god giggled, and it was actually a delightful noise, and Bahorel was not in the habit of finding this like laughs _delightful_. “Your secret’s safe with me Bahorel. So, now that we are friends, what are you in here for?” 

Bahorel arched his eyebrow. “I’m in here cause you called me.”

“Ah, we’re such good friends that you can already tease me! Come on Bahorel, don’t tease me, I’m delicate.”

“You don’t _look_ delicate.” (It was true, and not even because of the bandages or cuts or missing appendages. Bahorel prided himself on being able to spot a fighter, and even though the dark and the drugs, he could tell that this skinny, long haired boy was a fighter. It was a look in one’s eyes you see, a look that Jehan most definitely had.)

“I don’t? But... Nevermind. Still, you know what I mean. Why are you here?”

“I was stabbed.”

Jehan, who had been smoothing out his blanket absentmindedly, looked up. “Really? Where?”

Bahorel jabbed a thumb in the direction of his wound. “Stomach.”

“How did it happen?” Jehan asked with all the excitement and fascination of a child being shown another child’s skinned knee on the playground. He seemed to remember himself a moment later though, because his cheeks suddenly colored visibly, and he looked away, back down at his hand. “I mean. If you’re alright with telling me. I understand if-”

Bahorel cut him off with a laugh. “It’s fine. It’s not that interesting of a story though.”

Jehan looked back up and he was smiling again, shyly. “I’ll be the judge of that.”

“I picked a fight with some guy in a sleazy bar. Turns out he had a switchblade hidden in his sleeve. He got me and I passed out and woke up here.”

Jehan nodded. “Why did you pick a fight with him?”

“I felt like it.”

“You _felt like it_?”

Bahorel shrugged. “I was bored.”

Jehan giggled again. “You’re right Bahorel, that is not a good story.”

Bahorel figured it couldn’t be that bad if it had got Jehan to giggle again, but he didn’t say that. Instead he said, “Well we can’t all be storytellers. How would you improve it?”

Jehan hummed thoughtfully and leaned back against his pillow. “Well... you should definitely make it nobler. Add some stakes. You were defending someone who couldn’t defend themselves.”

“Even if I wasn’t?”

“Ah Bahorel, don’t you know? All the best stories aren’t true.” Jehan seemed to be getting slower, sleepier. It was late. Bahorel wasn’t even sure what time it was.

“Okay, so I was defending someone. But since I passed out, does that mean he got whoever I was trying to protect?”

“No of course not! You bought enough time for her to get away. You should be very proud.”

“Her?”

“Your sister. That’s who you were defending.”

“My nonexistent sister?”

“That’s the one. See, that’s a much better story.”

It really was. Though Bahorel expected he’d listen to Jehan tell any story, because Jehan had a melodic voice and funny little speech patterns and a pretty smile, even when he was half asleep in a hospital bed.

Bahorel wondered what he was like in the outside world.

“What about you?” he asked suddenly.

“Hmm?” Jehan’s eyes were closed.

“What’s your story?”

“My story?” He was quiet after that and Bahorel thought maybe he had fallen asleep, until he spoke again, slowly. “There was... a great wolf.”

Bahorel was silent as Jehan continued, as slow as he started. “That’s right. A great wolf. He attacked me and I thought the only way to stop it was to kill him. And I did not want to kill such a great creature, so I wept. But as I wept, I realized that killing him was not the only way. So I sacrificed a bit of myself, for the wolf to eat. This sated the beast, and he let me alone.” Slowly he opened his eyes and turned his head again to smile at Bahorel. “And that is how I defeated the wolf.”

Bahorel smiled back. “Now that,” he said, “is a great story.”


End file.
